Crappy Drawings

Hello Readers! Are you still there? It has been a while. I’m happy to report that I have not abandoned this blog.

I’ve been meaning to do a blog post since September, but then I got ridiculously pregnant, and everything I was writing and drawing was a total pile of crap. Normally I am pro-crap piles, but only if it’s intentional (if you know me at all, you know how much I love a nice steaming pile of poo’).

No kidding though, I really have been busy these last few months. I have good reason for not posting a new blog entry…and yes, I do believe in the art of presenting believable excuses for not getting jack shit done.

Back in September, we went on our first “vacation” as a family, to Florida. I’d like to say that all my planning really paid off, but nothing could resolve the fact that we were traveling with a toddler.

The fun began at the airport…I made Ben carry the car seat in a special car seat carrying backpack, which I had read on some mommy blog is absolutely necessary for travel. This picture doesn’t even come close to accurately depicting how awkwardly huge it was (I was too lazy to redraw it). It looked like the backpack was wearing him. Ben’s whole body was lurching forward, and he never stopped sweating.

I highly recommend it!

Liam nursed the entire plane ride there and back. He’s off the charts for his height. In the world of mommy blogs, he’d be described as “absolutely thriving,” which is great and all, but it looked like I was nursing an eleven year old.

We did not purchase a seat for Liam, so we had the joy of being crushed by his large body for the duration of the flight. He had a great time harassing fellow passengers and repeatedly opening and closing the window shade and tray table. I know the bald gentleman in front of us loved it, because he kept peeking back at us between the seats, obviously yearning to join in on the fun.

When we got to Florida, Liam decided to stop sleeping. We quickly realized that a vacation with a toddler is not really a vacation, but rather a constant reminder as to why you should never leave your house again, and instead, just live vicariously through travel magazines.

So you may be thinking, “Wow, really? You’ve been too busy to write a blog post because you went on a vacation back in September?”

NOOOOOO, obviously not. I’ve got plenty more excuses!

I also spent an ample amount of time looking for programs to watch on Hulu. I watched a documentary about the horrors of cow’s milk (bear with me)… which led to a documentary about slaughter houses (seriously, I’ll get to the validity of this excuse)…which led to my husband, our toddler (Liam), and I all going vegetarian. You might not think that’s a viable excuse, but I’m telling you, it is. Changing our diet was incredibly time consuming because I had to spend a lot of mental energy worrying about our protein intake and making sure my husband wasn’t gonna grow man boobs from eating too much tofu. Here’s a fun drawing about being vegetarian (so you don’t hate me too much for it).

I’d like to point out that the vegetarian guy drawing is not a drawing of my husband. He saw this picture and was concerned that I thought he had tofu man boobs. For the record, he does NOT have tofu man boobs.

We also survived the holidays – Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, and even a family reunion, all while not eating meat, which is downright humiliating in the company of family, who looked at me like I had just tucked my skirt into my underpants. We’re talking looks of disgust, as if not only my underpants were showing, but that they were also covered in prominent poop stains.

The thing that has kept us the busiest, though, was the fact that we moved across the country to Pittsburgh, PA. Yep! We packed for a month, put all our crap into moving pods, and got the heck out of Los Angeles.

Everyone knows moving is unpleasant, so I’m not going to go into the details, but let’s just say that there were a lot of panic attacks, tears, sleepless nights, early labor signs, bed-rest, toddler tantrums, vomiting, and fights with family members about a cat who shit and peed on a bed (true story not worth reliving).

Anyway, we made it out alive.

I was 9 months pregnant when we got to Pittsburgh, and spent a good part of each day feeling sorry for myself, which was a lot of fun for the whole family. I think my husband enjoyed it the most. This pretty much sums up that last month of pregnancy:

On Friday, January 22nd, I finally popped out a baby. We named him Henry.

I would go into all the details of the labor, but honestly, I reeeeeeallly don’t want to.

Instead, I pledge to post a drawing of the moment Henry’s little head popped out of my vagina. Don’t worry, you won’t have to see anything too obscene. Maybe just a little bush…

My wonderful friend B is in the hospital because she just gave birth to twins! I cannot believe she had two humans inside her, and now they are here – new to this world, like little aliens with wrinkly red faces.

Actually, they’re quite beautiful. B called me via Facetime and I got to see them sleeping next to each other. We haven’t visited yet because Liam (my baby) has a cold. I would hate to wipe his sick all over B’s new babies.

Of course this great birthing event calls for some crappy baby drawings. B! if you ever find time to read this (which is doubtful), I apologize for these drawings. Your babies are so much cuter than this:

This is Olga. She is seventy-six years old, and enjoys long walks in NYC, in her ankle length winter coat that she purchased at her local thrift store.

This is Boris. He also lives in NYC. He has been a cab driver for 26 years and doesn’t take shit from anybody.

Congrats to B and her family! Welcome to the world of endless diapers and breast pumping good times.

This week was a little rough. I’m pretty sure it was worse for my husband. He really gets the short end when I’m feeling emotional and crabby…and by crabby I mean a raving bitch – aka PMSing, but it’s safer not to use that term. If I use that term about myself, then my loved ones will think it’s acceptable for them to use as well, and it’s just not. I repeat, NOT OKAY (by the way, I’m still PMSing, so don’t challenge me).

The thing that really put me in a foul mood though was the four hours I spent on Thursday night, doing an extremely shitty drawing. Nothing frustrates me more than making art and realizing it’s god awful. It was so bad that I still can’t look at it, and I certainly can’t post it. So instead, here’s a doodle I found, which I did a few years ago.

It’s probably more disturbing than my post about badly drawn babies. I’ve seen it make some people actually feel physically sick.

Anyway, so Thursday night, my husband got home from work really late, and he walked through the door just as I realized I had wasted my entire evening on this sucky drawing. So, I did what any woman in her not-so-right mind would do…I unleashed the beast…on my husband of course. Who else?!

When we finally got into bed, I told myself, “Tomorrow is a new day.” But when I awoke Friday morning, I still felt lousy. I knew what had to be done. I said to myself, or I guess to Liam (my one year old son), because he was sitting right there staring at me, “I need to get a goddamn cheeseburger.” Just the thought of getting a cheeseburger started to make me feel better. There’s something to be said for eating your feelings.

Liam and I ate at a restaurant in Culver City. I ordered our food and he stared at the couple sitting behind us, as if hanging on their every word. Our food arrived promptly, and I began the process of cutting half of everything on my plate into little bite-size pieces.

Liam was a joy! When he wasn’t shoving food in his mouth, he was waving at everyone who walked past our table. He sat in the high chair, as still as a saint, with the posture of a dancer. I couldn’t believe it. He has never made it through an entire meal at a restaurant without whining, climbing, or throwing food on the floor.

The burger was epic! It glistened with juices that ran down my chin. My eyes filled with tears of joy as I experienced the crisp crunch of the iceburg lettuce. The brioche bun was the yin and yang of sweet and salty. Someone had made that burger with love.

A beam of light peaked through the clouds from heaven, and shined down on us. Little angels burst from specs of dust and swirled all around our table. I mean, really. It was amazing.

Needless to say, the day really turned around. When we got home, I put Liam down for his nap. Then, I sat on the couch and embraced my food coma. I even left my muffin top untucked.

When I was a kid, I loved to draw. When I wasn’t drawing women in ball gowns, I was drawing horses. For some reason, I never managed to obtain a reference photo of a horse, and ended up with horses that had back legs that looked like someone had taken a crowbar and smashed the knees back in the wrong direction. Do horses even have knees? I don’t know. Seems to me like they bend in two places, kind of like a finger. Anyway, the pictures usually looked something like this:

So, I could post images of a well drawn horse, but why do that when I can implement the discovery I made as a kid?! I found a way to avoid drawing certain subject matter. I call it the “Fence Adding Technique.” It’s a great tool to have anytime there is something you can’t draw or are too lazy to obtain a reference photo.

Notice when the unsightly, crippled legs are strategically placed out of site, the subject matter has the potential to be improved across the board. In this case, the horse now dreams of some day becoming a unicorn, the details in the grass are more apparent, and there is even a pretty pink flower that has sprouted from the soil. Also, let’s note that this horse is decidedly more attractive than the first one with the crappy legs, all thanks to the “Fence Adding Technique.”

The same idea can be applied in different ways. If you are unable to draw hands, for example, then all the characters in your drawings can be wearing mittens. Same goes for feet – they can all be wearing socks…and so on. Just so it is clear, the idea is that you take something you can mostly draw and hide the parts that you have continually failed to render accurately. Let’s face it, drawing hands and feet really sucks. Plus, there is endless entertainment to be had with socks and mittens, especially if the characters you’re drawing are naked.

Or maybe you don’t know how to draw socks or mittens either. Just like the horse, you can have your characters standing behind a fence too!

Or Maybe you can draw the feet, but not the hands, then you can simply have your character standing with their hands in their pockets:

or coyly placed behind their back:

Now, of course, if i wanted to improve as an artist and get better at drawing all things, I could reference a photograph, and practice. I have done this before and I can tell you, it wasn’t half as fun.

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